Thursday, September 25, 2014

Pt Townsend Wooden Boat Festival

I woke up on Saturday morning after working on the boat somewhat late. The intarwebs were down at our house. That's not good and it worried me, but I left and headed out for the ferry. It was a fun drive back up to Pt Townsend I even had some time for a brief chat with Nancy.
It was kind of like going home. I felt right driving past the turn to our rental house.

I even considered driving up to the house to see how it looked.
When we arrived, there was a rock in the front yard that had a small stack of rocks on top of it. As we drove past one time, I told Quin to poke it. He did, and we found out that it really was a stack of rocks, not one of the sculptures with a rod in it to hold the rocks. Ooops.
So we (mostly Quin) spent some time stacking rocks to rectify our mistake. We even improved the situation and built a couple more towers (again, Quin).

I didn't stop by the house, but I like to think the rocks are still standing and have been improved.

I arrived in PT about noon. The park & ride behind the Safeway had a sign that said "full" and they were opening up the marina parking area. I didn't think that was right and drove through town.
It was right. There were a lot of people in town. I had to park in uptown near the library. I walked down the stairs and to the maritime center. It was packed.
I paid my discounted entrance fee (thanks for the membership, Nancy) and went into the marina area.

It was like a normal street fair with 8x8 white canopies except instead of selling jewelry made from rocks and shells or tie dyed kids clothes, they were selling epoxy or tools. Lee Valley had their booth right where our boat had been built!
I stepped out back and found Josh there manning the Small Craft Advisor booth along with trusty #1 right beside. And Simeon was there as well.
Simeon told me that John Welsford was speaking at 1:00, so we wandered over there.
But first, I wanted to see the EdenSaw challenge. This is where teams have 48 hours to build a seaworthy boat. Scott was in the challenge and I wanted to see him.
Needless to say, he was quite busy, but we did talk briefly. I wished him well and moved back to see John talk.

Scott has the green shirt

You can see their boat

When writing this post, I found out that Scott's team won. A very nice video was posted.

I listened to John speak about safety and small boats, and while there I said hi to Melissa. Nice to see her again. I spoke with some other scamp builders, then went on walkabout.
I found my way over the the NWMC and spied Simeon just heading out. He asked me if I wanted to go out with him, and I most assuredly did.
We spent the afternoon sailing about; a lovely day on the water that I thoroughly enjoyed. Simeon was a wonderful host and even let me take the helm. I got in more sailing time than I've had in years and we had some good conversation. I hope I didn't bore him with too many questions about scamp building.

Simeon and Noddy, #11

We were out over 3 hours, but the time seemed to just fly past. I didn't even sunburn as badly as I thought I might.

I even got some pictures of the rigging of #1 and Noddy and a few ideas of things to do during my build.

I drove home that evening happy. It had been a great day. Thanks Simeon.